Chapter 12

Tariq Hadid stopped showing up on Monday.

I didn't notice at first. He was a third-year, ran in different circles, and our paths rarely crossed. Just another face in the crowd of students who moved through Mudwick's halls without intersecting my life.

But by Wednesday, the whispers had started.

I heard them in the library. In the corridors between classes. At the edges of conversations I wasn't part of. A third-year was missing. His roommate had reported him. Housing was "looking into it."

No email this time. No family emergency. No explanation at all.

Derek found me after dinner, his face grim.

"You heard about Tariq?"

"Just rumors."

"It's not rumors." He sat down across from me in the empty common room. Most students were at evening activities or in their dorms. We had privacy, which felt increasingly necessary. "I talked to his roommate. Nate. Kid's a wreck."

"What happened?"

"That's the thing. It took Nate a couple days to even realize something was wrong." Derek shook his head. "Tariq's bed looked slept in every morning. His stuff got moved around. Nate figured they were just on different schedules, missing each other. But then he noticed Tariq wasn't showing up to any classes. Asked around. Nobody had actually seen him since Sunday night." He let that sink in. "Someone was making the room look lived in. But Tariq was already gone."

"So Nate reported it?"

"Wednesday morning. Went to housing, told them his roommate had been missing for days." Derek's voice was bitter. "They said Tariq's family had been contacted, everything was being handled, there was nothing to worry about. Same script they gave me about Jerome. Same nothing-to-see-here bullshit."

"But this is different. No email from Tariq. No clean story."

"That's what I'm saying." He leaned forward. "Someone tried to make it look like he was still around. The bed, the stuff being moved. But they didn't bother with an email. Didn't fake a family emergency. Just hoped nobody would notice until it was too late." He gestured at nothing. "By Friday, his stuff was still in his room. Nate showed me. Clothes in the closet. Books on his desk. Half-finished essay on his laptop. He didn't pack. Didn't say goodbye to anyone. Just stopped existing."

"And now?"

"Saturday morning, the room was empty. Administration cleared it out overnight. Shipped his belongings home per his family's request."

"Did Nate try to reach the family?"

"Every number goes to voicemail. Emergency contacts don't answer. Nobody picks up, nobody calls back."

I sat with that for a moment. Three students now. Three weeks. The pattern wasn't just visible, it was screaming.

"Third-year," I said. "Scholarship. First-generation."

"No family in the Zant world." Derek finished the profile I was building. "Same as Lucia. Same as Jerome. They're not even trying to hide it anymore."

"Or they're rushing."

"What?"

"Lucia had a clean exit. Email, cover story, belongings removed before anyone could question it. Jerome was the same. Surgical." I thought about what Derek had just described. "But Tariq... they tried to cover it up by making the room look lived in, but they didn't bother with an email. Didn't fake a family emergency. Just hoped the roommate wouldn't notice for a few days. That's sloppy."

"So they're getting careless."

"Or desperate. Something's changed. Maybe there's a timeline we don't know about."

Derek looked at me with those hollow eyes that seemed to be his permanent expression now. "Does it matter? Whether they're sloppy or rushing or whatever? Three kids are gone. More will follow. And nobody's doing anything."

"I'm doing something."

"What?"

I didn't have an answer. Not yet. But I was going to find one.

We gathered in the empty classroom that had become our unofficial meeting space. The evening light slanted through windows that hadn't been cleaned in years, casting long shadows across desks that had seen generations of students pass through.

The mood was different tonight. Darker. The news about Tariq had shifted something in all of us.

"Three in three weeks." Sasha had her notebook out, but she wasn't writing. Just staring at the page like the pattern she was tracking might rearrange itself into something less terrible. "The frequency is increasing."

"Or we're just noticing it now," Thaddeus said. "Maybe this has been happening all along and we never knew."

"That's not more comforting."

"I know."

Dao was pacing near the window. He'd been restless since I told them about Tariq, unable to sit still, his anger looking for somewhere to go.

"We need to do something," he said. "Not document. Not watch. Actually do something."

"Like what?" Sasha asked. "Storm sublevel three? Demand answers from the headmaster?"

"Better than sitting here waiting for one of us to disappear."

"And if we act without information, we get caught. Get expelled. Or worse, we tip off whoever's doing this that we're onto them. Then we become targets for a different reason."

"We're already targets. Eli fits the profile. You fit the profile. How long before they decide we're next?"

Marcus had been quiet, sitting in the corner with his arms crossed. The grief I'd sensed at the lake was still there, but something else had joined it. Resolution, maybe. Or resignation.

"There has to be someone we can tell," Thaddeus said. "Someone in authority. A professor who's not part of this. Maybe Cross."

Dao stopped pacing. "Cross recruited Eli. Brought him here personally. Knows exactly what he can do. If there's something wrong with this school, there's a good chance she's right in the middle of it."

"You don't know that."

"I don't know she isn't."

"She's been helping me," I said. The words came out before I'd fully decided to say them. "Since I got here. She's the reason I can function at all."

"Which makes her the perfect person to report concerns to," Thaddeus said. His voice was hopeful, clinging to the possibility that the system might still work. "Or the worst person, depending on whether she's involved."

I thought about Cross. The warmth in her eyes when she talked to me. The patience when I struggled with techniques that should have been basic. The way she'd shown me the old hospital, shared what place-memory really meant, made me feel like I belonged somewhere for the first time in my life.

She'd seemed like she cared. But seeming and being weren't the same thing.

"I'll go to her," I said.

Everyone looked at me.

"I'll tell her what we've noticed. The pattern, the disappearances, the impossible timelines. See how she reacts."

"And if she reacts badly?" Sasha asked.

"Then we'll know." I met her eyes. "I can read her. If she's lying, if she's hiding something, I'll feel it."

"That's a risk."

"So is doing nothing. I fit the victim profile. So do you. We can't just wait and hope."

The room was quiet. I could feel them weighing the options, measuring the danger of action against the danger of inaction.

"Be careful what you reveal," Sasha said finally. "Don't mention Marcus's grandmother. Don't mention the portal. Just the surface stuff. The disappearances, the pattern, your concerns as a worried student."

"And if she seems trustworthy?"

"Then we reassess. But assume she isn't until proven otherwise."

I nodded. It was good advice, even if I hoped she was wrong.

I waited until the next afternoon.

Partly because I wanted time to prepare what I'd say. Partly because I was scared of what I might find. Cross had been the closest thing I had to a mentor in this world. The person who'd made me believe I wasn't broken. Learning she was compromised would be like losing solid ground under my feet.

Her office was in the faculty wing of the main building. Oak door, brass nameplate, the comfortable clutter of someone who actually used their workspace instead of treating it as decoration. Books stacked on every surface, organized chaos that probably made perfect sense to her. Papers arranged in piles that marked ongoing projects. A window overlooking the grounds where the last light of afternoon was fading toward evening.

I knocked. The door was already half-open.

"Eli." She looked up from her desk, and her face shifted into that warm expression I'd come to associate with safety. With belonging. "Come in. Close the door behind you."

I did. Sat in the chair across from her desk. Tried to look like a concerned student instead of someone about to test whether his mentor was complicit in disappearing people.

"What's on your mind?"

"Students are going missing."

Something flickered across her face. Too fast to identify, there and gone in an instant. I cataloged it anyway.

"You're talking about the recent withdrawals." She leaned back in her chair, her posture open and relaxed. Deliberate casualness. "Lucia Medina, Jerome Wallace. It's always concerning when students leave mid-semester. Is there something specific that's worrying you?"

"The timelines don't make sense." I watched her closely as I spoke, not just her face but the emotional weather underneath. The surface and what lived beneath it. "Lucia's family lives in New Mexico. Jerome's lives in Detroit. Both supposedly came to collect their children before 6am. Both left no trace anyone heard."

"Family emergencies can move quickly. When there's a crisis, people find ways."

"Quickly enough to drive ten hours before dawn? Quickly enough to pack an entire room without making a sound?"

She was quiet for a moment. Considering. But I felt no surprise underneath. No confusion about what I was describing. Just calculation. The gears of her mind turning, assessing.

"I understand why you might find this suspicious," she said. "You're new here, you're observant, and you've been through a lot in a short time. It's natural to look for patterns, to worry about threats."

"I'm not imagining things."

"I didn't say you were. I said it's natural." She folded her hands on the desk in front of her. "But Eli, there are explanations that don't involve conspiracies. Private family matters. Medical situations people don't want to discuss. Students who decide this life isn't for them and leave quietly rather than face the stigma of dropping out."

"There's another student missing now. Tariq Hadid. Third-year."

This time I watched carefully. Her expression stayed concerned, sympathetic. But underneath, that same flicker. Recognition. Something she already knew about.

"That is concerning," she said. "I hadn't heard."

She was lying. I felt it like a cold thread running beneath the warm surface of her words. She'd known before I told her. Maybe not every detail, but the broad strokes. Another student gone. Another gap in the roster.

"No email this time," I continued. "No family emergency. Just gone. His stuff sat in his room for a week before administration cleared it out."

"That's unusual. Normally we try to handle these situations with more care."

More care. Like the disappearance was a procedural issue. A failure of paperwork.

"I felt something," I said. Pushing now. Testing. "From Lucia. Before she disappeared. We bumped into each other in the hallway, and I felt her... draining. Something was being taken from her."

Now I watched for real. Cross's face remained concerned, sympathetic. Exactly what a caring mentor should look like when a student shared something frightening.

But underneath.

Underneath there was no surprise at the word "draining." No confusion about what I meant. When I said someone was taking something from Lucia, Cross's mind didn't reach for explanations or alternatives. It reached for something specific. Something she knew about. Something she'd known about for a long time.

She wasn't shocked that extraction was happening. She was worried that I'd noticed.

"That must have been frightening," she said. "Your abilities are still developing. Sometimes we perceive things we're not equipped to interpret correctly."

"So you don't think it was real?"

"I think you're a talented young Zant who's been through significant trauma, and I think you should be careful about the conclusions you draw." Her voice was gentle. Patient. The same voice she'd used when teaching me to filter the overwhelming traces in the Portal Hall. "Our minds can play tricks on us, especially when we're stressed. When we're looking for threats, we find them everywhere."

"Even when the threats are real?"

"Especially then. Fear makes us see patterns that aren't there. Makes us connect dots that don't actually connect."

I let the silence stretch. Let her think I was considering her words, wrestling with doubt.

But I wasn't doubting. I was reading.

The warmth was still there. The concern. Those parts of her were genuine, I could feel that. She did care about me, in her way. Did want me to succeed.

But the warmth wrapped around something else. Something cold and deliberate. An agenda she wasn't going to share. A purpose I wasn't supposed to see.

"Don't investigate yourself," she said. The shift was subtle, but I caught it. Advice becoming warning. "If someone is really extracting, they're dangerous. More dangerous than you're equipped to handle."

She paused, and I felt her making a decision. Calculating what to reveal.

"There are people who would use your ability for terrible things, Eli. Have you heard students talking about Miriam Moss?"

The name hit differently coming from Cross. More real.

"A little. Just rumors."

"She's not a rumor. She was a student here, decades ago. Brilliant. Powerful. And completely without conscience." Cross's voice was steady, but I felt something underneath. Not quite fear. Respect, maybe. For something dangerous. "She's been hunting practitioners like you for years. Scholarship students. First-generation. People without protection. That's why we're so protective of new students. Why we watch carefully. Why we react when someone goes missing."

"You think Miriam took them? Lucia and Jerome?"

"I think there are threats outside these walls that you don't understand yet. And I think the best thing you can do is let people who know this world handle it."

"I thought you said I might be imagining it."

"I said you might be. But if you're not, if there's really something wrong here, then the worst thing you could do is draw attention to yourself. Ask the wrong questions. Make yourself a target."

"So what should I do?"

"Trust me to handle it." She leaned forward, and her eyes were sincere. That was the worst part. The sincerity was real, even wrapped around the deception. "I've been at Mudwick for a long time. I know how things work here. If there's something wrong, I'm better positioned to investigate than you are. I have access you don't have. Credibility you're still building."

"You'll look into it?"

"Quietly. Carefully. I'll find out what's really happening with these students. And if there's a problem, I'll make sure it's addressed."

Trust me.

The words landed wrong. Because underneath the warmth, underneath the concern, I felt something I hadn't wanted to find. She wasn't asking me to trust her because she was going to help. She was asking me to trust her because she needed me to stop looking.

"Okay," I said. "I'll let you handle it."

I stood up to leave. At the door, I paused. Turned back.

"Professor Cross? Thanks for listening."

"Of course." Her smile was warm and genuine. "That's what I'm here for."

I walked out of her office and didn't look back.

I found the others in the empty classroom.

They were waiting, tense and quiet. Dao standing near the window. Sasha at a desk with her notebook. Thaddeus sitting with his hands clasped. Marcus in the corner, still and watchful.

They looked up when I came in. Dao tense, ready for bad news. Sasha analytical, waiting for data. Thaddeus hopeful, despite everything. Marcus barely meeting my eyes, like he was afraid of what I'd found.

"She already knew."

The words dropped into the silence like stones into still water.

"When I told her about the pattern, she wasn't surprised. She was calculating. Figuring out what it meant that I'd noticed, not what it meant that students were disappearing." I sat down heavily in the nearest chair. "When I mentioned extraction, I felt recognition. Not confusion, not skepticism. Recognition. She knows what's happening."

"Maybe she's investigating it herself," Thaddeus said. His voice was strained. Clinging to hope. "Maybe she knew because she's been looking into it quietly, trying to find answers."

"She wasn't looking for answers. She was looking for threats." I met his eyes. "She's not trying to stop it. She might be part of it."

"You're sure?" Dao asked.

"I read her. Underneath the warmth, underneath everything she says, there's something cold. Calculating. She's got an agenda that has nothing to do with helping students."

"She recruited you," Sasha said slowly. "Brought you here personally. Spent weeks training you."

"Yeah."

"Why? If she's part of whatever's happening, why invest all that time in you?"

I'd been thinking about that since I left Cross's office. The warmth that felt genuine because parts of it were. The care that was real even wrapped around deception.

"Maybe she has a use for me. Something she's planning to use my abilities for."

"That's not comforting."

"I know."

The room was silent. And in that silence, I felt something strange.

Not just the emotional weight of everyone present. Something else. The room itself, pressing in. The accumulated tension of everyone who'd ever gathered here to discuss things they shouldn't discuss. Decades of secret conversations, plans made and abandoned, fears shared in whispers.

For just a moment, I felt the walls remembering.

Then it was gone. Just stress. Just my mind playing tricks after what I'd felt in Cross's office.

I pushed it aside.

"So what do we do?" Dao asked. "The administration won't help. Cross won't help. Who's left?"

Nobody said anything. Because the answer was obvious, and none of us wanted to say it.

"We are," Sasha said finally. "We're what's left."

"That's insane." Thaddeus shook his head, but the gesture was weak. Automatic. "We're first-years. Most of us, anyway. We can't take on whatever's doing this."

"We can't ignore it either." Sasha's voice was steady, but I caught the fear underneath. The particular terror of fitting the victim profile. "I'm scholarship. First-generation. No connections. So is Eli. If there's a list, we're on it. Staying quiet isn't safety. It's waiting for our turn."

The truth of that settled over us like a weight.

"The portal in sublevel three," Dao said. "Marcus's grandmother said it was closed for maintenance, but that's not the real reason. If something's happening to those students, that's where the answers are."

"We don't know what's down there."

"We don't know what's up here either. At least down there we might find proof. Evidence. Something we can show people who might actually care."

"If such people exist."

"They have to." Dao looked around the room. "Somewhere, there has to be someone who doesn't want students disappearing. Someone who would do something about it if they knew."

"And if there isn't?"

"Then at least we tried. At least we didn't just wait to die."

Marcus stood up. He'd been silent through all of this, watching, listening. Now he moved to stand where everyone could see him.

"My grandmother spent fifty years keeping her head down," he said. "Stayed quiet. Didn't draw attention. Protected herself and her family the only way she knew how." His voice was rough with something that might have been anger or might have been grief. "And now she's dying, and the last thing she's trying to do is warn me about something she never stopped. Something that's still happening."

"Marcus..."

"I've been a coward since I got here. Telling myself I was being careful. Smart. Protecting the family legacy by staying invisible." He looked at me. "But what legacy? We're already nothing. What's left to protect?"

"You don't have to do this."

"Yeah. I do." He took a breath. "I'm going to help you access sublevel three. The family name still means something to some of the old systems. Maybe enough to open doors that are supposed to stay closed."

"And if it doesn't work?"

"Then we find another way." He almost smiled. "But I'm done hiding. Gran didn't spend fifty years warning me about this so I could watch it happen and do nothing."

I looked around the room. At the faces of people I'd known for only a few weeks but who'd become more important than anyone I'd left behind.

Dao, whose family had been destroyed by accusations they couldn't fight. Who needed this to be true so his anger could finally point at the right target.

Sasha, who fit the victim profile and knew it. Who was channeling her terror into analysis because the alternative was paralysis.

Marcus, whose grandmother had waited fifty years for someone to stand up. Who'd finally decided that someone might as well be him.

Thaddeus, whose faith in institutions was cracking but not broken. Who needed to believe there was still a way to make things right, even as he helped us work around the system.

And me. The transfer student who could read people. Who'd learned his mentor wasn't what she seemed. Who'd discovered that the place he finally belonged might be built on something terrible.

"Okay," I said. "We do this. We investigate the portal. We find out what's really happening."

"When?" Sasha asked.

Dao opened his mouth, but Sasha cut him off.

"Not now. Not this week." She held up a hand before he could argue. "Winter break starts in four days. Everyone goes home. If we try something now and it goes wrong, there's no time to recover. No time to regroup."

"So we just wait? While more students disappear?"

"We use the break." Her voice was steady. Practical. "We plan. We research. Marcus, you said your grandmother has information, fragments she's been trying to share. Winter break is when you can actually sit with her, get everything she knows before..." She didn't finish the sentence. Didn't have to. "The rest of us dig into whatever we can find. Family histories. Old records. Anything about the sublevels."

"And then?"

"We come back in January ready to actually do something. With a real plan. Not just walking into the dark hoping we find answers."

Dao looked like he wanted to argue. But even he could see the sense in it.

"We need time to plan," I said. "Use the break. Come back ready."

One by one, they nodded.

Dao. Sasha. Marcus. Thaddeus.

We were committed now. Whatever we found down there, whatever happened next, we'd face it together.

The plan was rough. The timeline stretched longer than any of us wanted. But we were done waiting for someone else to fix it. Done being the kind of people who disappeared without a fight.

When we came back in January, we'd learn what Mudwick was really hiding.

And then we'd decide what to do about it.

The last day before break felt unreal.

Classes continued like nothing was wrong. Students packed bags and said goodbyes. The dining hall buzzed with talk of holiday plans and family visits. Everyone pretending the world was normal.

I packed slowly. My duffel bag sat open on the bed, half-filled with clothes I'd need for two weeks at home. The photo of Mom watched from the nightstand. I wondered what she'd think of all this. If she'd be proud of me for digging deeper or terrified that I was getting involved in something I couldn't handle.

My phone buzzed.

Shelby.

wednesday at the diner? 2pm? please say yes i haven't seen a human face i actually like in WEEKS

I stared at the message. The diner. Our booth. Pretending everything was fine while she asked about boarding school and I lied about every single part of my life.

I typed: sure

The word sat there on the screen. One syllable. A promise I didn't know how to keep.

YAY okay don't bail on me this time. i'm ordering cheese fries and you're paying because fancy boarding school means you're rich now right

definitely not rich

lies. see you wednesday!!

I put the phone down and finished packing. The bag felt heavier than it should have. Not the weight of clothes and books, but the weight of everything I couldn't say. Every truth I'd have to hide while sitting across from someone who knew me better than anyone.

Two weeks at home. Christmas with Dad. Denny's with Shelby.

And the whole time, I'd be counting the days until I could come back and find out what was really happening in the sublevels of Mudwick.

The portal back to the ordinary world opened at dusk. I walked through it carrying everything I owned and everything I knew, ready to pretend for two weeks that I was still the person who'd left Millbrook in October.

I wasn't. I hadn't been for a while now.

But I'd gotten good at pretending.